About your bin collections

Your bottles go in the recycling, your broken plates go in the general bin, and your weeds go in the garden waste. Here's a bit more information about your rubbish collections, and what might go wrong

In BigTown we've got three different kinds of bins - your green garden waste bin, your brown recycling bin, and your black general waste bin.

What goes in what bin

This isn't a complete list, rather it's some examples of the things you should and shouldn't put in each bin.

What does and doesn't go in the bin
  Garden Recycling Main
Do add Flowers Bottles (glass and plastic) Meat packets
  Grass cuttings Cans Food waste
  Hedge trimmings Cardboard boxes Hard plastics
  Weeds Plastic pots and tubs Padded envelopes
Don't add Cat litter Polystyrene Garden waste
  Food waste Non-food (eg paint) tins Building waste
  Soil Broken glass Bits of wood
  Invasive weeds Hard plastics Batteries

What might go wrong

Contaminated bins

If the bins contain stuff in them which shouldn't be there, that can cause problems at the tip, the recycling separator, or the incinerator. If we see that you're putting the wrong things in the wrong bins then unfortunately we won't be able to collect them - we'll put a tag on them explaining why, and we're afraid you'll have to separate the contamination out yourself before we try to collect again. In the worst cases, under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 we can issue a notice which could result in a penalty charge of £60 and the withdrawal of your service.

Missed collections

There are many reasons we might unfortunately fail to collect your bins on bin day - we might have had staff shortages, a road might have been blocked, there might have been other delays, or sometimes the problem might have been at your end.

Whatever the reason, a missed rubbish collection is the last thing we want - you can check if we already know about your missed collection, and we'll try and collect it as soon as we can.